DigiNames

The $SHOP Shopify earnings call could not be more bullish for domain names! Not only did they confirm the purchase of Shop.com for $100 Million, but they also confirmed that domain names are increasingly MORE important in the ai digital commerce world than ever before! Particularly in the face of agents and agentic shopping, not in-spite of them. Here is the exact language from the earnings call: Paul Treiber, a capital markets analyst at the Royal Bank of Canada, asked the following: Q: Good morning. Shopify acquired shop.com this quarter for about $100 million, which is a significant sum. How do you view the coexistence of shop.com with merchant websites and other channels? Why now, especially against the backdrop of the rise of AI agents? Why is having a centralized entry point important? Answer (Harley Finkelstein): In the brick-and-mortar retail world, it's location, location, location. We believe the same holds true for the internet—shop.com is our prime "golden address." Think of it this way: this is a statement signaling that we're ready to take Shop in a more ambitious direction. We intend to deliberately invest in building Shop's reputation and discoverability as a destination for consumers, rather than merely as an order‑tracking tool. We see it as a highly convenient and accessible gateway for shoppers to discover great brands and products. The switch requires no action from merchants, and Shop's web‑based shopper traffic is already growing faster than its app‑based traffic. We're simply moving from shop.app to shop.com. We consider this one of the most important addresses on the internet, and it reflects our ambitions for Shop."

A thought (or two) on the .si and .ai market: A beach house on the sand in Malibu is dope… until you wake up and it’s been swept out to sea... .si was never the next big trend. It’s the needle that just popped the .ai bubble and sent everyone sprinting back to .com. Uncertainty is way more dangerous than bad news in any market! You can run pretty far off a cliff… until you look down. Anguila is one thing...a small Caribbean island whose core business is tourism. Selling .ai domains is now a beloved export! Slovenia is a whole other bail of wax! This is an industrial European nation and those local businesses are going to revolt against all these foreigners speculating on (or even using) their domain names! Local businesses can no longer get a good domain in their country code. The registry is non-commercial, it's academic & administrative! This will have blow back and rules will change. Mark my words... Now picture every European AI startup right now: Slovenia = EU = support them? But it’s growing because of a Trump mandate = must boycott? Right? Meanwhile your only real capital sources and customers are American....so...? What a conundrum! Just one of them. One solution is get on .COM and stop playing the game. Neutral ground. Strong ground. Permanent ground. Some companies will still brand on .ai or .si. Of course. Most, however, just relearned the lesson they learn once a decade: .COM is bedrock. Everything else is wet sand in Malibu...sexy as hell until your sea view drowns you.

The news has finally broke that @Shopify has acquired the Shop.com domain name! I learned about this deal several months ago at a very interesting cocktail party. While I was not involved in the transaction, and because nobody directly involved is my source, I am going to tell you something that is not being reported: The price was $100 Million!!! JUST the domain name. That is the state of the market ladies and gentlemen. YOUR DOMAIN = YOUR BRAND = THE LAST MOAT